Ioannis Bakolis is Professor of Public Mental Health and Statistics and founding Deputy Director of the Centre for Mental Health Policy and Evaluation at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. Before joining King’s College, Ioannis had previously held research positions at Imperial College London (2013-2015; 2008-2012) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2012-2013). During that time, Ioannis completed a PhD in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Imperial College London (2013) under the supervision of Professor Peter Burney and Professor Richard Hooper.

Research interests

Professor Ioannis Bakolis' programme of multidisciplinary research integrates statistics, epidemiology, biology, geography, and computer-science to explore how climate and environmental stressors and other forms of social adversity affect population mental and physical health over the life course. Some examples of Ioannis current work include exploring how exposure to air and noise pollution as well as neighbourhood deprivation affect mental disorders and co-morbid conditions; and how extreme heat affects depression, anxiety and psychosis. Ioannis is also a member of the core team of the Urban Mind project involving the development and use of smartphone technologies to monitor the impact of the surrounding physical and social environment on population mental health and wellbeing in real time. This programme of work demonstrated for the first time in the UK the negative impact of air pollution on the prevalence and severity of mental and neurological disorders and multiple long-term conditions.

Professor Bakolis' research interests also extend to the development and application of methods for rapid evaluation and implementation of mental health policies, interventions and services. Professor Bakolis is an international expert on the design of robust, quasi-experimental and hybrid studies and has a portfolio of methodological research tackling the challenges of causal inference interpretation in observational studies.

Professor Bakolis led and supported several UK and international COVID-19 studies to increase the understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on excess mortality, mental health service utilisation, self-harm rates, healthcare workforce and domestic violence incidences. Professor Bakolis' COVID-related work influenced governmental guidelines and led to prioritisation of service users with severe mental illness in the government’s vaccination programme.

Although not exclusively, much of Ioannis' work is conducted within large population-based surveys; birth cohorts and routinely collected information stemming from smartphone technologies and electronic health records.

• Air pollution and mental health over the life course
• Extreme heat and mental health
• Covid-19 response
• Natural experiments
• Hybrid studies

Teaching

• Module leader: ‘Advanced Statistical Methods in Psychiatric Epidemiology’, Global Mental Health Msc

Current course lectures:

• ‘Quasi-experimental designs’, Applied Statistics and Statistical Modelling Msc
• ‘Climate, environmental change and mental health, Neuroscience and Mental health Bsc
• ‘Evaluation of scale-up of complex population health interventions’, Global Mental Health Msc
• I currently supervise 3-4 MSc students per year for their final dissertations, and 4 full time PhD students. I am willing to accept new PhD students. Interested students should contact me with an idea of their project proposal in the first instance, with an indication of any potential funding support.

Expertise and public engagement

As an expert communicator and commentator Professor Bakolis' work is being regularly offered to popular media for dissemination to improve public understanding on climate, environmental change and mental health.